I'm helping a friend whose laptop might have a virus, and we need to transfer her files safely to a new computer she's buying. She has an external hard drive and the internal one from the laptop. I plan to use my Linux machine to connect both drives, run antivirus scans, and safely pull key files. What antivirus software would you recommend I use for this process? I'm using Linux Mint, and I also have a hard drive to USB adapter for the laptop's drive.
2 Answers
For this situation, I recommend downloading a bootable antivirus solution. I personally like AVG, but you might want to run a couple of different tools just to be safe. You can find a good list of bootable antivirus options online. Just burn one to a USB and run it on her laptop.
Also, if you already have a live disk made a few years back, consider updating it just to make sure you've got the latest tools and definitions!
First off, isolate the infected system! I wouldn’t suggest directly plugging that hard drive into your clean setup, even with Linux. Instead, you can boot her laptop using a Live USB with Linux. This way, you can access the infected OS directly. Make sure to download ClamAV on that live environment, update its definitions, and run a scan on the infected drive.
Also, what files are you looking to retrieve? If they’re just text files and images, that should be fairly straightforward. But if you need any application data or executables, it could get trickier.
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